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Harry Lauder's Walking Stick

This is a great plant. Its twisted branches provided interest in winter and it flowers well before anything else does.

"Corylus avellana . . . is a deciduous, multi-trunked, thicket-forming, multi-stemmed, suckering shrub that typically grows to 12-20’ tall. It is native to Europe, western Asia and northern Africa where it is typically found growing in rich thickets, woodland borders, wooded slopes, hedgerows, clearings and along streams. Monoecious flowers (separate male and female flowers on the same plant) bloom on bare branches in late winter to early spring (March-April) before the leaves emerge. Somewhat showy, pale yellow-gray male flowers appear in sessile drooping catkins (each to 2-3” long). Inconspicuous female flowers with red stigmas bloom just above the male catkins....

‘Contorta’, commonly called contorted filbert, corkscrew hazel or Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick, is a contorted version of the species plant. It was discovered growing as a sport in an English hedgerow in the mid-1800s by Victorian gardener Canon Ellacombe. This plant was subsequently given the common name of Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick in the early 1900’s in honor of Scottish entertainer Harry Lauder (1870-1950). It is a deciduous, rounded, multi-trunked shrub which typically grows to 8-10’ tall, and features, as the cultivar name suggests, twisted and spiraling branches, twigs and leaves. Most plants sold in commerce are grafted. "